Have you ever been to Old Timers Day at the ballpark? This is Old Timers Day at the theater. Let’s trot out these relics for one more trip down Alzheimer’s Lane. If watching Sylvester Stallone, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and company do things half as well as they used to gives you wood, more power to you. For me, most of Expendables 2 was a haunting visit from the ghost of ass-kicking past.
I think Expendables 2: Expendablers was timed poorly. The international flavor here is profound … wouldn’t it have been much better to coincide this with the Olympics? Representing China in the middle-aged freestyle brawling category – Jet 
Li! Wait, here are the scores for Sweden’s Dolph Lundgren. Oh, bad news, the judges thought the body slam was over-rotated, that’s gonna cost him the bronze.
Hmmm, the plot of Expendablers: smarmy old farts do things they did better in previous films and make fun of themselves. Sly’s character is even named, “Barney.” Want to have a contest to see who can come up with a name less likely to inspire ass-kicking? Is “ass-kicking” hyphenated? Somewhere in Asia, Jean-Claude Van Damme shows up because we need a bad guy. They even name him, “Vilain.” Cute. If that wasn’t enough to introduce, “I’m a bad guy,” he then kills the only card-able cast member, Bill the Kid (Liam Hemsworth). You monster! You killed the only guy with backstory.
The gang gets all somber about the loss. Now, wait, that doesn’t seem very “expendable,” does it? Anyway, I’m not sure why the sad, Bill moved the plot along nicely, thank you. The execution of vengeance has a weird tongue-in-cheek flavor, as if we naturally expect Sylvester Stallone and Jason Statham to be funny. These two are contextually funny, ironically funny, but in an endeavor where they play caricatures and not real characters, the quasi-witty banter comes off as flat and a little depressing.
And then Chuck Norris shows up. Goody. Chuck Norris even tells a Chuck Norris joke. This is followed by Arnie and Bruno trading taglines from each other’s movies. Aaaaah!! The movie has become self-aware! Stay away! But it’s just Expendablers; it’s not the kind of I Robot self aware in which people die, it’s more like if your TRS-80 or Commodore became self aware. OMG, my Pet Computer became self aware; with a full 8K of memory, it could totally … destroy this cassette tape. Don’t get the references? Don’t worry, this cast does.
I got a Chuck Norris joke for ya: Chuck Norris is so tough that he actually sat through the filming of every single one of his movies.
In Act III, we’re asked to remember the name of the character Liam Hemsworth was playing. I’m glad I wrote it down above, ‘cause I sure didn’t remember it when Stallone berated me in the theater. Honestly, I don’t think that’s quite fair – get Sly out here right now, unscripted and monitor-less and see if he can come up with that name again. Good luck.
Van Damme! There’s Sly, Dolph, Arnie and Bruce!
Let Li and Statham and Chuck Norris cut loose.
But whether mature or ripe or merely old,
One thing is clear: the out you have sold
Rated R, 102 Minutes
D: Simon West
W: Richard Wenk, Sylvester Stallone, Ken Kaufman, & David Agosto
Genre: Nostalgia
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: The person actively rooting for another Rocky or Terminator film
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Let us suppose you didn’t even like the original Die Hard …
